The Longevity Paradox

Dr. Steven Gundry is a former cardiac surgeon and currently runs his own clinic, investigating the impact of diet on health. I recently read his book The Plant Paradox and, as I often do, I typed up notes. I’ve known for years about gut flora and how it impacts our health, but this was an informative read. My notes (I wanted to remember) are below, but keep in mind there is more information in the book and highly recommend you read it yourself. I believe we all have our own take-a-ways from books like this.

How
To Die Young At A Ripe Old Age

Aging and healthy living are two concepts that medical
science and research cannot exhaust, as new and relevant knowledge regarding
these two things are brought to light daily. However, the Longevity Paradox is
entirely different from the rest, offering tips, practices and experiences,
drawn from a wealth of knowledge.

In terms of sharing health related issues with our
parents, it’s not so much sharing the same DNA as it is sharing similar habits
and living environments. Holobiomes
make us age rapidly. Recent research suggests this is real.

Gut
bacteria is very powerful, a more predictor of the outcomes of
many health situations than genetics.
This proves it is more likely for one to share similar health conditions
as one’s roommate, as opposed to one’s parents simply because you share similar
gut bugs. These gut bugs affect
every part of your health and longevity, and have proved in both humans and
animals to play vital rolls in how well and long you will live.

Antibiotics mess up our gut buddies. Our gut buddies are active day and night,
ensuring that your immune, nervous and hormonal systems function as they
should. Their most important role is in supporting your digestive system. Gut
bacteria are so relevant to the digestion process that the inability of the
bacteria in your gut to process the food you eat equals being unable to benefit
from the nutrition in that food.

Gut buddies digest the food we eat, but also keep
yeast/ candida in form, train the immune system to identify what is beneficial
and what is not, as well as being in charge of gut entry. They also signal to
the important hormones in the body, about the situations of things in the gut
by communicating with the mitochondria.

Both mitochondria and gut buddies share a remarkable
process. When they receive signals, they respond in manners that increase their
number, thereby improving their function.
This is known as hormesis. This
process suggests nurturing bacteria that sends longevity messages to their sisters. Gut buddies affect everything
that concern your health and comfort. Treat them well and they release
feel-good hormones such as serotonin. Bad bugs do nothing but cause you to be
overweight, sick, and liable to a host of diseases. They do this by taking over
the communication link between your gut buddies and their sisters, causing you
to crave all of the food they need, which are harmful to you. When you are ill/
have diseases, the bad bugs cannot protect you.

Monocotyledonous plants are the troublesome for some
human guts, as they contain the compounds that create the greatest problem ever
– lectins. Like you and I, plants intend to live a long
life, hence lectins are produced as a survival tactic. They affect our gut
buddies, cause them to be unhappy, wear and tear them down, resulting in us
being sick and overweight. The introduction of toxins, genetically modified
foods, processed foods, use of herbicide, fertilizers, and additives have
messed the system up. While these drugs have their good sides, they also mess
up the entire spectrum by wiping out not only the bad guys, but also the good
guys.

It’s not enough to have the right gut buddies in your
microbiome, the other half is ensuring they remain on their own side of the intestinal
margin. If bits of their cell walls,
knowns as lipopolysaccharides, move
away from the margin into your gut, organs, tissues or blood, regardless of
them being gut buddies or bad bugs, they elicit a response to the action,
causing inflammation and setting the
scene for rapid aging and illness. All diseases therefore begin in the
gut. Thus all diseases can be brought to
a halt therein as well.

Inflammation results in aging. Stomach acids are
designed to break down our meals into single constituents. If all goes well,
every other thing with the exception of the single molecules remain right
outside the intestinal margin. On the other hand, if all fails to go as it
should, other compounds will gain entry, resulting in health issues. This is known as leaky gut. When you
have leaky gut, the immune system become highly active. Leaky gut is at the
center of the most common diseases often linked with aging.

Causes of leaky gut:

Lectins

NSAIDs
(ibuprofen, Naprosyn, Aleve, Celebrex…) These drugs create holes in the
intestines, allowing lectins and bacteria to enter into the body.

PPIs
(proton pump inhibitors) and stomach acid reducers. Stomach acid reducers are
another set of drugs that are harmful to your gut. Stomach acids helps you
destroy many bad bugs before they make into your gut. In the absence of enough
stomach acid, bad bugs can take over the human body. Hence they wipe out the
defense strategy against lectins.

The 7 myths of aging:

The
Mediterranean diet promotes longevity. Not true because they eat mostly grains. We should take our cues from those who live
in the Blue Zones. Two of these
populations, the Kitavans and Okinawans consume sweet potatoes, and plantains
and taro roots in large amounts. They differ from regular carbohydrates because
they are different resistant starches, which act differently from other carbs
in the gut. They pass through the small
intestines instead of being changed into glucose. These do not cause a spike in
blood sugar/insulin levels. In addition, our gut buddies love resistant
starches.

Animal
protein is essential for strength and longevity.
In the Blue Zones, people take their cues from, animal protein were once and
are still very rare and expensive, and therefore eaten at a minimum. While we need proteins to power us and build
muscles, in the US we are made to believe we need far more than we actually do,
not for health, but for commercial purposes.
In the US, animal protein is subsidized by the government and fed corn
and other grains, vs. being pastured raised.
The results in higher blood sugar levels and shorter life span.

Growth
hormones promote youthfulness and vitality. Majority of
people who live in the Blue Zones are much shorter than average height people
who live elsewhere. On average, women are 5” shorter than the men. Research
shows that men and women of the same height pattern had the same average life
span. Contrary to what society assumes as fact, increased height does not mean
you’re living a better life. Growth is exaggerated by what we eat in the US
(like grains and animal proteins).

Having
a high metabolic rate is a sign of good health.
In fact, a high metabolic rate is no sign that you are living a healthy life.
Instead, it suggest that your metabolism is ineffective, and being put under
more pressure than it should in order to burn fuel.

It
is important to get plenty of iron as you age. Over the years, we have been taught that
people get anemic as they age. This is not true. Accumulation of iron within the human body
can cause one to age faster. Those in the Blue Zones who donated blood on a
regular basis lived longer. Iron causes us to age rapidly because it meddles
with the function of the mitochondria.
Research shows those with Huntington’s disease also have their
mitochondria overloaded with Iron.

Saturated
food should not be demonized. Saturated fats are bad for you. Back in the 1950s Ancel Keys discovered the
correlation between animal fat (found within the protein) and heart attacks. Fat sources associated with longevity? Fats
from plants, so consume lots of olives, olive oils and nuts.

Milk
does your body good. The avoidance of cow milk and
consumption of goat or sheep milk products help the Blue Zone people live long
and healthy lives. Years ago, a mutation occurred, and the protein present in
northern European cows changed from casein A2 to casein A1. During the course of digestion, A1 causes
inflammation. The most common cows in
the world, known as the Holstein, produces this form of milk. Goat and Sheep produce the healthier casein
A2.

Heart health
is connected with overall health. We
have been taught to believe the heart gets weaker as we age, until finally it
gives out. The truth is, heart disease
can be completely avoided, and can equally be reversed without the use of drugs
or surgery. In many cases, like those of children and diabetic patients, the
cells were mistaken by antibodies formed against the reoccurrence of illnesses
(for example rheumatic fever) for the bad guys, and so they begin to attack. In
both cases heart disease was caused by immune responses, or responses as a
result of mistaken identity.

Another reason why eating
large quantities of animal proteins causes us to age rapidly is the absence of
Neu5Ac on blood vessels. Neu5Ac is a lectin which binds to sugar, found
in elephants and humans. The animals we eat contain Neu5Gc, a molecule
that prevents lectins from binding to sugar. When we consume Neu5Gc, our immune
system detects an inflammation and attacks. As a result, heart disease can
develop. We can eat shellfish, poultry and fish because they carry Neu5Ac.

Contrary to popular
belief, cholesterol is not the root cause of heart disease. Saturated fat
causes heart disease by increasing blood cholesterol levels, but cholesterol
itself is irrelevant.

The real enemies are triglycerides.
They are affected by almost anything. Simple sugars and grains raise triglyceride
levels and too much animal protein isn’t healthy either.

New discovery shows that
our microbiome does determine our susceptibility to developing cancer,
and ability to respond to treatment, should we get cancer. Our microbiomes and
MTOR notify our body of abundance of food.
Our cells take a growth up. When this occurs, the body is denied the
opportunity to sieve through the cells, deciding on which to keep and which to
prune. Unknowingly, abnormal cells begin
to grow and become stored in large quantities as we feed them with food. The
only way out of this is to reduce your energy consumption for a while so as to
enable your body reset and let of these abnormal cells on a regular basis.
To fight cancer, feed on ketones, nuts (tree nuts) as they contain lots of
anticancer properties.

There is a link between
cancer and heart disease. The course through which arthritis occurs is the same
for coronary heart disease. Aging is not responsible for the wear and tear of your
joints, inflammation is. Bad bugs and
leaky gut allow lectins and lipopolysaccharides to penetrate your
body. Lectins prompt an attack and inflammation, which results in arthritis
and every other problem with aging.Lipopolysaccharides to the same when they
entry into your joints, eliciting the same response as lectins.

NSAID’s
complicate things for arthritic patients because these drugs make our gut more
prone to invasion. We need to nourish our gut buddies and allow the gut wall to
heal. This can be done by ensuring that foods containing WGA (wheat germ agglutinin) like wheat and whole grains are
excluded from our diet.

Chronic inflammation left
unattended results in deterioration of our bones, which leads to osteoporosis.

I perceive that our
musculoskeletal systems greatest threat as we age is an invisible muscle loss,
which happens over time and we are oblivious to it. As you age, a chunk of your
muscles have been replaced by fat, fooling us into believe we have remained the
same. To prevent this we must keep muscles hungry through regular strength
building exercise. Exercise also changes
our gut microbiome because our gut buddies love it.

We ought to age with our
brains intact – as sharp as it ever was. All diseases we associate with aging
such as dementia begin in the gut as a result of inflammation. The brain in your head is our second brain.
Your gut is your first brain, being able to control the brain in your
head. They work like the senses in humans, sending messages and communicating
with other parts of the body. Changes in the microbiome results in
neuroinflmmation, which goes on to cause a decline in cognitive abilities.

Remember lectins cause
inflammation and these play a key role in neuroinflmmation and neurological
diseases. Dopamine is widely known to regulate emotions/pain, pleasure
sensations. The downside to it is as the release of dopamine in this situation
lays the block for a host of disease, particularly Parkinson’s disease.

Our neurons and their bodyguards
(microglial cells) sense that the blood-brain barrier has been invaded, they
make an effort to protect against such invasion by thinning the neurons’
dendritic structures. Eventually the
body of the cell is all that remains and the end result is the inability of the
neurons to communicate with each other. This is at the core of memory and
cognitive problems like dementia.

Glutamine,
found in flavor enhancers, is capable of killing neurons that produce dopamine.

In multiple sclerosis
(MS), the immune system gradually eats away the protective lining of nerves
(myelin.) This causes a breach in the communication between the brain and the
rest of our bodies. Again, disease
begins in the gut and this can also be reversed by diet, instead of using drugs
that subdue the immune system.

The lymphatic system
cleans up the spaces between cells.
Lymph cleans up garbage in our bodies, including our brains and is known
as the glymphatic system. It is most active during deep sleep. Recent studies
have revealed that a major risk factor for obesity is dementia. You can
drastically reduce this risk by consuming cold pressed olive oil as it has
anti-inflammatory properties. Gut
buddies love leafy greens and it also slows down the aging process in
the brain.

The lining of our gut
protects us from invasions. Weakening of
the gut wall results in breakdown of our inner skin, causing aging.

The more fat in
our body, the more bad bugs you have.
Keep your microbiome active with foods they love, while you starve the bad
bugs out.

Endocrine disruptors
cause adults to gain weight as they age, as they disrupt the release of
estrogen. To be safe therefore, avoid disruptors like Bisphenol A (BPA). In
order to stay safe from these, avoid consuming canned foods, use glassware for
food storage, ensure toys are BPA free, and request receipts are placed in the
bag or thrown away as they contain BPA too. Phthalates are also EDs. Sunscreen
should be free parabens and consume Vitamin C as it is highly effective in
guarding against solar damage to skin.

Arsenic is an antibiotic,
but also an ED. Azodicarbonamide is a foaming agent used to produce leather
products as well as lighten flour. It is highly unsafe, yet found in use by
many fast-food restaurants. It triggers asthma and allergic reactions, and is
highly irritating to the gut. Avoid fast foods, do away with most grains, and
if you eat bread, choose organic fermented varieties.

Artificial blue light
makes us age faster because it subdues melatonin production, causing us to stay
awake more often, which is closely linked with obesity. Blue light also
stimulates the hormones responsible for our being hungry and awake, resulting
in weight gain.

Tons of bacteria live on
our skin, called skin flora. These bacteria secrete substances that help
protect and rejuvenate our skin. We should not use bacterial soap or cleansers
because they kill the good and bad bacteria.

Bonicel (BC30) is a
health bacterium that is not digested by stomach acid. It is highly efficient
in preventing and reducing rough skin lines and increasing skin hydration and
elasticity. Polyphenols found in fruits, vegetables and grains also help
fight aging skin because of their antioxidants.

We need to fertilize our
gut buddies with prebiotics. Probiotics are gut bugs while prebiotics
are the food that feed probiotics.
We can’t digest prebiotics, so they stay in the gut so the probiotics
can eat them. Prebiotic foods are found in tubers and roots like yams, tiger
nuts, parsnip, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, and taro root. Ground flaxseed
contains prebiotic fiber, Vit. B, omega-3 fatty acids and is highly beneficial
to gut buddies. Our skin buddies love these also, so add them in body scrub.
You can also use flaxseed oil as a cream for your hair and body.

Artichokes, leeks, ochre
(lectins bind to the mucus in okra), jicama (prebiotic fiber), and cruciferous
veggies are all anti-inflammatory and have oxidative properties.

Certain nuts are
highly nourishing, but you have be careful.
Cashews are seeds and peanuts are legumes and both are
full of lectins. Real nuts are good for gut and health. They reduce possibility
of gallstones, protect against diabetes and regulate blood pressure.

In order to activate the
omega-3 fats from fish oil, take an 81 milligram enteric-coated aspirin a few
times a week. Olive oil is considered a miracle drug for longevity. It
transports polyphenols, but also increases a type of cholesterol known as
apolipoprotein A-IV, which helps prevent platelets from clunking after eating a
meal or in the early morning, when heart attacks are more likely to occur.